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Choosing a content management system

If you’re a business owner and you’re looking to develop a website or rejuvenate your old one, there are a lot of things to consider, not the least of which is whether you want a brochure-style website or one powered by a content management system (CMS).

This decision needs to be based on many factors but in general if you want to update your own content a CMS is the way to go. Once you decide that a CMS website is your best option, choosing a content management system is your next decision. There are literally thousands available, so you can place your trust in a web developer and go on his or her recommendation or you could use what I believe is the best CMS for most businesses – WordPress.

Choosing a content management system: Why WordPress?

WordPress is the number one blogging web development tool on the scene. It’s also a great platform for CMS, even if you have no thought of ever having blogs, posts or articles on your website. Benefits include:

Quick and easy to install.

Open source, so it’s free to use. However, most businesses will need to hire a web developer to customise and set-up WordPress for their needs.

While less relevant for businesses who need a customised look and functionality, there are thousands of WordPress themes and plugins available. Many of these are free to download.

Self-updating to increase security and reduce spam.

Because it’s open source, support for issues is often only a Google search away.

While all these benefits are important and are perhaps enough to get WordPress over the line, one of the keys reasons I lean toward WordPress when choosing a content management system is ease of management for the end user.

In the years that I have developed websites for businesses, most of the business owners I’ve met don’t have much time, resources or skills to keep their website updated. For these people it’s obviously imperative that their website is easy to update.

This is the beauty of WordPress. Anyone with a reasonable level of computer-literacy should pick up WordPress quite quickly. As with any new system there are basics that need to be learned, but most people will be able to learn these basics in a few hours or less. It’s probably comparable to learning Word or Outlook for the first time.

Still not convinced? Then go to www.wordpress.com and sign up for a new blog to drive-test WordPress. It’s free and you’ll be able to create and update pages and posts to your heart’s content. While the look of the resulting test website will be vastly different from a business website, the way you create new material and update existing posts and pages will be the same.